Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 6:37 AM and sunset 7:20 PM, for 12h 42m 56s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 20.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the eight hundred seventy-second day.
On this day in 1889, the Eiffel Tower opens:
The main structural work was completed at the end of March 1889 and, on 31 March, Eiffel celebrated by leading a group of government officials, accompanied by representatives of the press, to the top of the tower.[12] Because the lifts were not yet in operation, the ascent was made by foot, and took over an hour, with Eiffel stopping frequently to explain various features. Most of the party chose to stop at the lower levels, but a few, including the structural engineer, Émile Nouguier, the head of construction, Jean Compagnon, the President of the City Council, and reporters from Le Figaro and Le Monde Illustré, completed the ascent. At 2:35 pm, Eiffel hoisted a large Tricolour to the accompaniment of a 25-gun salute fired at the first level.[24]
Recommended for reading in full:
Craig Gilbert writes Tuesday’s court race is the biggest Wisconsin election of the year. What will it tell us about the mood of the voters?:
Have conservatives lost the upper hand in Supreme Court races?
The more conservative candidate has won 10 of 14 Supreme Court elections in Wisconsin dating back to 2000. But the more liberal candidate has won two of the past three contested races (2015 and 2018). A Neubauer victory would make it three of four.
Can Hagedorn overcome the ever-growing electoral clout of liberal Dane County?
Dane County, home to Madison, is easily the fastest-growing part of Wisconsin and its sky-high level of political engagement can give it even more electoral impact in a low-turnout April race than in a higher-turnout November race.
A little history makes the point. Two decades ago, Dane County voted for the more conservative Supreme Court candidate, Diane Sykes, against Louis Butler in 2000. It has voted for the more liberal candidate ever since, by larger and larger margins.
Last year, it supported winning court candidate Rebecca Dallet by 62 percentage points. It also accounted for 13.4% of the votes cast statewide. That was its highest share ever in a court race and a higher share of the statewide vote than any other county, including the much larger Milwaukee (which accounted for 13.1% of the statewide vote) and the biggest Republican County, Waukesha (8.9% of the statewide vote).
Anna Nemtsova writes Putin’s Crackdown on Dissent Is Working (“A new law criminalizing “disrespect” for Russian society and institutions might mark the end of the country’s few remaining legal forms of protests”):
The new law on disrespecting state symbols, in particular, intends to choke off freedom of speech, according to Rachel Denber, the Europe and Central Asia deputy director for Human Rights Watch. “Why else is it necessary, other than to ban people who are critical of the government, to demonize criticism and dissent?” she asked me.